The pious bosom and the back
Shone in the farce of courtly black.
The weeping Laureate's ready pen
Lamented o'er the best of men;
And Oxford sent her load of rhyme
In all varieties of chime,
Administering due consolation,
Well season'd with congratulation.
Cambridge her ancient lumber wrote,
And what could Cambridge do but quote?
All sung, tho' very few could read,
And none but mercers mourn'd indeed.
The younger shepherd caught the crook,
And was a monarch in his look.
The flock rejoic'd, and could no less
Than pay their duty and address;
And Edinburgh was heard to sing
Now heaven be prais'd for such a king.
All join'd in joy and expectation,
And union echoed thro' the nation.
A council call'd-
INT'REST, thou universal God of men,
Wait on the couplet and reprove the pen ;
If aught unwelcome to thy ears shall rise,
Hold jails and famine to the poet's eyes,
Bid satire sheath her sharp avenging steel,
And lose a number rather than a meal.
Nay, prithee, honor, do not make us mad,
When I am hungry something must be had;
Can honest consciousness of doing right
Provide a dinner or a bed at night?
What though Astrea decks my soul in gold,
My mortal lumber trembles with the cold,
Then, curst tormentor of my peace, begone!
Flattery's a cloak, and I will put it on.
In a low cottage shaking with the wind,
A door in front, a span of light behind,
Tervono's lungs their mystic play began,
And nature in the infant mark'd the man.
Six times the youth of morn, the golden sun,
Through the twelve stages of his course had run,
Tervono rose, the merchant of the plain,
His soul was traffic, his elysium gain;
The ragged chapman found his word a law,
And lost in barter every fav'rite Taw.
Through various scenes Tervono still ascends,
And still is making, still forgetting friends;
Full of this maxim, often heard in trade,
Friendship with none but equals should be made.
None can find
His soul is all the merchant.
The shadow of a virtue in his mind.
Nor are his vices reason misapplied;
Mean as his spirit, sneaking as his pride.
At city dinner, or a turtle feast,
As expeditious as a hungry priest:
No foe to Bacchanalian brutal rites,
In vile confusion dozing off the nights.
Tervono would be flatter'd; shall I then
In stigmatizing satire shake the pen?
Muse, for his brow, the laurel wreath prepare, Though soon 'twill wither when 'tis planted there.
Come panegyric; adulation haste,
And sing this wonder of mercantile taste;
And whilst his virtue rises in my lines,
The patron's happy, and the poet dines.
Some, philosophically cas'd in steel,
Can neither poverty or hunger feel;
But that is not my case; the muses know
What water-gruel stuff from Phœbus flow.
Then if the rage of satire seize my brain,
May none but brother poets meet the strain;
May bulky aldermen nor vicars rise,
Hung in terrorem to their brothers' eyes,
When lost in trance by gospel or by law,
In to their inward room the senses draw,
There as they snore in consultation deep,
Are by the vulgar reckon'd fast asleep.
ELEGY, WRITTEN AT STANTON-DREW.
JOYLESS I hail the solemn gloom,
Joyless I view the pillars vast and rude
Where erst the fool of superstition trod,
In smoking blood imbrued,
And rising from the tomb,
Mistaken homage to an unknown God.
Fancy, whither dost thou stray,
Whither dost thou wing thy way—
Check the rising wild delight.
Ah! what avails this awful sight
MARIA is no more!
Why curst remembrance wilt thou haunt my mind,
The blessings past are mis'ry now,
Upon her lovely brow
Her lovelier soul she wore.
Soft as the evening gale
When breathing perfumes thro' the rose-hedged vale,
She was my joy, my happiness refin'd.
All hail, ye solemn horrors of this scene,
The blasted oak, the dusky green.
Ye dreary altars by whose side
The druid priest in crimson dyed,
The solemn dirges sung,
And drove the golden knife
Into the palpitating seat of life.
When rent with horrid shouts the distant valleys rung,
The bleeding body bends,
The glowing purple stream ascends,
Whilst the troubled spirit near
Hovers in the steamy air,
Again the sacred dirge they sing,
Again the distant hill and coppice valley ring.
Soul of my dear Maria haste,
Whilst my languid spirits waste,
When from this my prison free,
Catch my soul, it flies to thee;
Death had doubly arm'd his dart,
In piercing thee it pierc'd my heart.
THE ROMANCE OF THE KNIGHT.
MODERNISED BY CHATTERTON.*
From "The Romaunte of the Knyghte by John de Bergham.”
THE pleasing sweets of spring and summer past,
The falling leaf flies in the sultry blast,
See 'Rowley Poems,' page 225, and note.
|